Mainlining Christmas

Whee!  I made Erin watch this, even though I knew he wouldn't get it.  And if you haven't seen the rest of Ranma 1/2, you won't get it either. I am fascinated by Japan's adoption of bits of Christmas.  It's not a national holiday there, very little of the population is Christian, they have just decided that it's an excellent excuse for a party.  Even just from what I can tell by watching a few anime holiday episodes, Christmas is seen as a time to have fun, give small cute gifts, and go out with your romantic partner.  I approve. Ranma 1/2 is one of the few anime that I have made the time to see all of, because it amuses me to no end.  This episode is one of the OVA series, which is to say it was a video release, not part of the initial TV run. The plot is fairly straightforward: Kasumi has a dream that Santa wants her to throw a Christmas party, so she does. Nearly every significant character in the 161 episode series has at least a cameo, so good luck

The similarities between this video from Gratuitous Art Films and my nightmares over the past week are simply too numerous to be dismissed as coincidence. Thanks to Gratuitous Art Films for sharing.

This is one of four "specials" that came on a DVD titled "The New Christmas Classics" I found at Best Buy for a whopping $4.99.  When the back said "George of the Jungle," I was hoping it was the original series.  Instead, it wound up being from the new Cartoon Network series. There were a bunch of shorts included, but only two that were Christmas themed: two halves of a Christmas episode. The first short, Jungle Bells, had Ursula trying to explain Christmas and bring it to the jungle.  I was disappointed that it was the new series, and I was trying not to like this. But I failed.  It was funny, and it grew on me pretty fast.  By the time George searched the world looking for Santa, I was chuckling. The second part was called, "The Goat of Christmas Presents," and dealt with the after effects of introducing George to the holidays and issues arising from him wanting Christmas more than once a year.  The goats motif alluded to in the titl

This half-hour special from the 1970s tells the heartwarming story of a stoned bear who is tricked into a life of slavery by Santa Claus. At least, that's what I got out of it. The first few minutes are somewhat intriguing.  There's a "bear city", where a large number of anthropomorphic bears live and work.  There's a lot of attempted comedy around the supporting characters and the honey factory where they all work; a few of the jokes are actually worth a chuckle.  The designs exist somewhere in that nebulous region between Yellow Submarine and Dr. Seuss, and, while they're not bad, they're not exactly inspired. While the rest of the bears are getting ready to hibernate for the winter, our intrepid hero, named... ergh... Ted E. Bear... wants to stay up and find Christmas. Spoiler alert: he finds it in the most trite, obvious place possible, with the help of a strange man in a red suit Ted can't identify, despite having been obsessed with Chri

On some level, this album facilitated the experiment that is this site.  As such, I'm not sure if I should be grateful or angry at Amazon for making this available. It turns out that if you want classical music, Amazon is happy to provide it in bulk for very little money .  I'm sure a lot of these recordings - or at least similar ones - are available for free, but this saves me the time of having to scour the internet for options. I'm not sure the price will last, but I actually got this for $1.99, meaning I paid about two cents a song.  The recordings aren't fantastic, but then neither is my sound system.  The sheer number of pieces means I can put this on random and listen for hours on end without hearing the same songs over and over again. Highly recommended if you want a collection of holiday music without the hassle that goes along with putting it together yourself.

 When he said, "I've come for the mail," it was in a plain voice, deeper than average, but certainly not so deep as to be described as baritone or bass.  Nevertheless, one doesn't expect to hear a voice so deep from a man so skinny as the one who walked into the Torytown, Ohio post office, and Rita Yoring was obliged to give the visitor a more thorough look-over.  He was indeed thin, barely the proverbial skin and bones.  He was wearing spectacles, which until that very minute Rita always believed to be another term for eyeglasses, rather than a distinct object, but there was no mistaking it: these were indeed spectacles.  They had to be.  He wore a business suit, not a flashy one, but it had certainly been tailored to fit, and he had a fedora pulled down over the tops of his ears. "Do you have a PO box?" Rita asked. The visitor sighed.  "No box," he replied, rubbing his forehead between the bridge of his spectacles and the rim of his hat.  &qu

We've been watching Christmas specials every day for over a week now.  I can feel my mind starting to splinter around the edges. Last night Erin put on Santa Claus and The Three Bears. (Review coming eventually...) About fifteen minutes in, I learned that it was not a half-hour special, but rather an hour-long special.  (Well, 44 minutes, but you know what I mean.) I practically strangled poor Erin, and then hid under the covers for the duration of that pile of crap. It isn't as I've watched nothing else this week.  I went to see Tangled, and watched the Castle episode I had missed. (It was a really great episode, by the way) I really feel like tomorrow should be Christmas already.  If it isn't, then WHY CAN'T I STOP THINKING ABOUT IT?  Seriously?  Not for weeks? I might explode before this is over. Although, I am interested to see the experiment through.  I'm a notorious humbug about the holidays, but I figure to test that.  By Dec 26, I'll eith